Quicken 2012 Subcategories

You surely didn’t buy Quicken 2012 so that you could spend all day Saturday sitting at your computer. Subcategories is one of the program’s features you can ignore if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed.

Subcategories are categories within categories. If you look at the Auto & Transport expense category, for example, you’ll notice a bunch of categories that follow the category and are slightly indented: Auto Insurance, Auto payment, Car Wash, Gas & Fuel, Parking, Public Transportation, Registration, Service & Parts, and Tolls.

When you use subcategories, you can subcategorize a transaction that pays, for example, auto and transportation expenses; you can further break down this category into subcategories such as insurance, fuel, service, and so on.

If you want to see a list of the ways you’ve spent your money, Quicken summarizes your spending both by category and, within a category, by subcategory.

Subcategories are useful tools. But they make working with Quicken a little more complicated and a little more difficult. As a practical matter, you usually don’t need them as you start off. If later on you want to track a spending category in fine, granular detail, you can go ape on the subcategory thing then, okay?

If you get excited about the topic of subcategories later — after you have the hang of Quicken — you can peruse the Quicken documentation for more information.

If you do want to use the Quicken subcategories, don’t delete the subcategories. If you don’t want to use the subcategories, go ahead and delete them.